Queen Sheba's Ring eBook

Of all our tremendous journey across the desert until
we had passed the forest and reached the plains which
surrounded the mountains of Mur, there are, I think,
but few incidents with which the reader need be troubled.
The first of these was at Assouan, where a letter and
various telegrams overtook Captain Orme, which, as
by this time we had become intimate, he showed to
me. They informed him that the clandestine infant
whom his uncle left behind him had suddenly sickened
and died of some childish ailment, so that he was
once again heir to the large property which he thought
he had lost, since the widow only took a life interest
in some of the personalty. I congratulated him
and said I supposed this meant that we should not
have the pleasure of his company to Mur.

“Why not?” he asked. “I said
I was going and I mean to go; indeed, I signed a document
to that effect.”

“I daresay,” I answered, “but circumstances
alter cases. If I might say so, an adventure
that perhaps was good enough for a young and well-born
man of spirit and enterprise without any particular
resources, is no longer good enough for one who has
the ball at his feet. Think what a ball it is
to a man of your birth, intelligence, record, and now,
great fortune come to you in youth. Why, with
these advantages there is absolutely nothing that
you cannot do in England. You can go into Parliament
and rule the country; if you like you can become a
peer. You can marry any one who isn’t of
the blood royal; in short, with uncommonly little
effort of your own, your career is made for you.
Don’t throw away a silver spoon like that in
order, perhaps, to die of thirst in the desert or
be killed in a fight among unknown tribes.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he answered.
“I never set heart much on spoons, silver or
other. When I lost this one I didn’t cry,
and now that I have found it again I shan’t
sing. Anyway, I am going on with you, and you
can’t prevent me under the agreement. Only
as I have got such a lot to leave, I suppose I had
better make a will first and post it home, which is
a bore.”

Just then the Professor came in, followed by an Arab
thief of a dealer, with whom he was trying to bargain
for some object of antiquity. When the dealer
had been ejected and the position explained to him,
Higgs, who whatever may be his failings in small matters,
is unselfish enough in big ones, said that he agreed
with me and thought that under the circumstances,
in his own interest, Orme ought to leave us and return
home.

“You may save your breath, old fellow,”
answered the Captain, “for this reason if for
no other,” and he threw him a letter across the
table, which letter I saw afterwards. To be brief,
it was from the young lady to whom he had been engaged
to be married, and who on his loss of fortune had
jilted him. Now she seemed to have changed her
mind again, and, although she did not mention the
matter, it is perhaps not uncharitable to suppose
that the news of the death of the inconvenient child
had something to do with her decision.